


Before the Storm

by YeetsingYe



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Drug Use, Five's POV, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28650969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YeetsingYe/pseuds/YeetsingYe
Summary: AU where Five never left, Ben didn't die, and everybody lives in the Hargreeves house happily ever after! (Is it though?)
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Ben Hargreeves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this out of frustration because I'm stuck in a loop trying to figure out time travelling for a post S2 fic. So hopefully this is gonna be happy and light hearted.

Growing up with a rigorous schedule of classes, training, and missions, the Hargreeves have adapted their different ways to entertain themselves during the small breaks they get in between. Number One and Number Three have an unusually close relationship and hang around each other all the time, inseparable like a fish can’t live without water. Number Two uses training as entertainment because he’s named Number Two. Sometimes Five would pass by the gallery and hear him talking to Mom while she’s resting. Number Four doesn’t stay at home when they’re off duty, but Reginald is usually too busy to notice, especially with his recent research about the moon. Five finds Number Four’s “outside friends” and their seemingly carefree lifestyle strange and fascinating sometimes. He could understand why Four is gravitated towards them. Number Six would always be reading in his free time, and he’d read anything. Five would find him in the peace of his room doing so, and if not, then in Number Seven’s room. Number Four tells Number Six numerous times to stop feeding into the Asian nerd stereotype, and Six just tells him to fuck off with a silent eye roll. And like Number Six, Number Seven is extremely attached to the violin and immersed in her practices most of the time. Number Six would sometimes accompany her in her bedroom. Five thinks it's their mechanism of dealing with the loneliness amongst chaos in a big house filled with people who are the polar opposite to them.

“Well, what do you do in your free time?” The girl says in a hushed voice, pink gloss covered lips opening and closing in slow motion, smoke blowing onto Five’s face like white feathers. They are sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch. Her eyes lowered, and Five feels her studying the moles, or maybe his lips.

“This,” He smiles, baring his teeth, and tries for two seconds to remember the girl’s name and fails. He opts to stand up and gives the girl’s soft curls a pad, and shoots Klaus a glance. “I’m going home.”

Klaus looks at him for a moment and laughs, “but you just got here?”

“No, I’ve been here for two hours. It’s twelve thirty.” They’ve just finished watching some ridiculously boring coming-of-age movie.

Klaus turns to the boy sitting in his lap and the two giggles. When Five is stepping towards the door, slightly annoyed, Klaus stops, “Yeah, curfew. It’s a Saturday. ”

But he sits there and doesn’t move an inch. He’s not going home tonight, Five figures.

Klaus’ friend’s apartment isn’t very far from home, so Five is able to make a few jumps right back into his bedroom with ease and without anyone noticing.

He grabs a fresh change of pajamas and heads downstairs for a shower. Normally the people in this house would be either sleeping or minding their own business in their room at this hour, which means Five doesn’t have to worry about one of his stupid siblings banging at the bathroom door to take their turn. The house is dead quiet. Five walks down the stairs with swift and quiet steps. He passes Klaus’ room on the way to the bathroom, coming to a halt when he catches a glimmering light under the door frame. That’s not Klaus nor Mom. His cautious instinct sounds alarm and makes him jump right inside. That could be a burglar.

The person crouching down by the nightstand jumps up and makes a loud yelp but swallows it back half way.

“What are you doing here?” Both of them say in a hushed voice with surprise and confusion.

Five hugs his pajamas tight by crossing his arms, “I thought you’re a burglar. Why are you in Klaus’ room?”

Ben looks at Five up and down with his hands behind his back and shrugs, “Just grabbing something I left here the other day.”

“What is it?”

“None of-” While Ben moves his lips to answer, Five is already behind his back and grabbing his hand, the pile of pajamas plopping onto the floor. “-stop! It’s nothing!”

Ben is holding the thing tightly in his hand, Five thinks it’s a plastic bag. Five pushes Ben against the nightstand with his body and starts pulling Ben’s finger and digging into his palm. He isn’t sure what Ben is thinking, but Ben does a thing that the quiet and gentle Number Six never does; he bites Five hand and it’s hard enough for Five to wince and let go. Five’s reflexes kick in and respond with a punch landing at Ben’s mouth that makes his head fall behind. In the slip second of Ben going through the pain, Five snatches the little plastic bag out of his hand like a prize for winning the fight and jumps a few feets away from Ben.

There is a piece of stamp like paper inside divided into six smaller ones with funny Spongebob Squarepants art on them. Five looks back to Ben and forgets what he is going to say. Ben is covering his mouth with one hand and holding out another, signaling Five for the bag, eyes blinking with wet reflections.

“Why don’t you use your power,” Five suggests while holding out his hand with the bag lying on his palm.

Ben doesn’t answer. Instead he walks over and reaches for it. But Five is quicker and takes his hand back. “It would’ve been easier.”

Ben rolls his eyes with frustration and attempts to catch Five’s hand and unfortunately fails. Five stops him and uncovers his mouth by pulling off his hand. He could see a split on Ben’s lower lip, red and fresh with blood still seeping out.

“That must’ve hurt.” Five says dryly.

“You’re an asshole.”

“Okay, how about you tell me what this is for and why you’re taking it from Klaus,” Five looks away, “And I’ll give it back?”

Ben gives the deal a five-second consideration and nods in agreement. “It’s Klaus’, but also technically mine, because he bought it with my money.”

That’s nothing new from Klaus, but it’s a big shocker that Ben is stealing Klaus’ drugs from Klaus who bought them with Ben’s money. Five nods and lets Ben go on.

“He and Diego and I made a bet with money a few days ago and he won,” Ben pauses for a moment and then continues, “He used the money on LSD and I don’t really want him using my money for that, so I’m taking it back.”

The explanation raises even more questions in Five’s head. What was the bet? Why does Ben care about what Klaus uses his money on? Somehow he picks the weirdest one, “Where did you get all that money?”

“It’s only sixty bucks, I have a good savings.”

Ben grabs the bag out of Five’s hand and Five lets him. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Sell it back to his dealer.” Ben walks towards the door but stops and turns around, frowning and wrinkling his nose, “You smell like marijuana.”

“You’re the one with LSD in his pocket.”

Ben smiles at him genuinely at the remark. That pulled open the newly clotted wound on his lip and Five can tell it’s starting to get swollen.

“Good night, Ben.” He says after a few seconds of silence.

“G'night.” Ben waves a goodbye to him and heads out of the door.

****************************

The next day at breakfast Ben tells Mom that he fell off the bed during the night. Grace doesn’t question him, only frowning slightly but still smiling while she shuffles around in the freezer. She then gives Ben an ice pack and asks him to keep it on his lips for a while.

Klaus gets home just in time. With Reginald’s usual absence at the breakfast table, he has no need to conceal the aftermath of a late night out. His chair is inched closer to Ben’s so that he can use the latter’s shoulder as a head rest while sipping on a cup of hot tea and throwing an easy smile at Five, who’s sitting across from them and giving Klaus some silent judgements with his eyes.

And all of sudden Five remembers the bet that Ben mentioned last night, the bet with Klaus and Diego. Though Ben seemed to have avoided the topic unnoticeably, it was Five who completely forgot about it in panic after hitting his brother on the mouth. It’s not that he feels left out. He’s just curious.

Five kicks Klaus awake from his afternoon nap. He’s wearing a ridiculous ducky print eye mask and a pair of earplugs to filter out the violin next door and doesn’t respond to Five calling his name, so Five decides he deserves a kick. Massaging his groggy eyes and pulling off the mask and the earplugs, he sits up muttering some inaudible complaints.

“What do you want, Five.”

Five smiles wide but looks at Klaus with dead eyes, “So I heard, you and Ben and Diego are making bets with money and-”

“Shit,” A yelp from Klaus cuts off Five, and Five sees him slide off the bed like a slippery eel and down onto the floor. Watching him panic and reaching underneath the bed, Five scoffs, “If you’re looking for your LSD, Ben has it.”

Klaus turns around and sits down leaning against the bed frame, face turning from absolute panic to completely relaxed like an extreme sport, “Thank God, oh and lil’ bastard!”

Five shakes his head, “You’re gonna tell me what kind of bet is worth sixty dollars?”

Klaus looks up at him and snorts, “Look at you with your hands behind your back and going all authoritative on me… why would I tell you that?”

“Next time you sneak out,” He makes sure he grits out the words through his teeth slowly, one by one and with a threatening tone, “I will snitch… you know I will.” And as soon as he finishes Five watches his brother’s face fall like a landslide and can’t help but smile like the cat who’s got the cream.

Klaus groans in defeat, opening his arms to gesture that Five has won. “Okay, it’s not that big of a deal. It was a few days ago when you and the old man went to do errands at the bank and we were bored, so we were betting on random shits like who’s got a bigger dick,” he sneaks a peak at Five’s face and sees him unmoving, “Well that wasn’t successful because we didn’t want to take our pants off together to double check the accuracy… anyways, we eventually made a bet on Allison and Luther.”

“On whether they’re a thing?” Klaus nods. But that doesn’t sound right to Five.

“I thought that’s common knowledge.”

Klaus shrugs, “Our brothers are as bright as potatoes in that field, I mean c’mon, Diego still stutters talking to Vanya sometimes, and Ben’s the biggest fuckin’ nerd.”

Five nods in agreement, that’s probably one of the few things he could agree with Klaus. “But that’s not worth sixty to bet on,” He watches his brother intently and notices him pinching his thumb lightly, and that’s it, that’s the tell. “There’s something you’re hiding from me.”

“What? Why would I do that?” Klaus squawks, “ Look, I’m sorry we didn’t let you in on this. But dude, you gotta stop being such a hard ass on me all the time!”

Five huffs a ridiculing laugh, “Whatever, I’ll find out one way or another.” Just as he speaks, Diego passes the hallway and pokes his head inside the ajar door, “Find out what?”

“Diego! Great timing,” Five gives Number Two a small wave as the latter enters the room. Though he’s facing Klaus with his back, he can sense Klaus is gesturing violently at Diego. Whatever the message is, Diego seems to get it and suddenly speaks at a volume a little too loud for their distance, “Are you two plotting for another dumb prank?”

“No, but you can tell me what you bet for sixty bucks.”

“Uh… on whether Allison and Luther are dating?”

“Well, they don’t wanna label that as dating, that’s what I heard,” Klaus adds from behind, “because of the uhm, pseudo-incest.”

Diego makes a sour face at the open use of the word incest from his sibling but quickly adjusts back when Five speaks again, “Anything else?” Diego shrugs, “None of your business.”

Five isn’t sure why he’s so infested in finding our whatever the stupid thing his brothers are hiding from him is. Maybe he doesn’t like them keeping too many secrets from him. Maybe it’s because the more they hide the more Five wants to know. And yeah, maybe he doesn’t want to be left out. Whichever reason is it, Five is going to find the answer.

“Woah woah woah,” Klaus cuts between the two of them, and Five suddenly finds Diego in his fight posture with knives in his hands, Five’s fists glowing blue. Both of them retract as soon as Klaus is in the middle, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. Diego slides the knives back in place carefully, knocking off Klaus’ hand, “Fine, I’ll tell you what it is, since you insist like an annoying kid.”

Five hears Klaus’ surprised gasp and watches him reaching for Diego’s mouth as a silly attempt to stop him and Diego catching his hands in a tight hold. “Nothing interesting, like who’s got a bigger dick, and who’s a virgin. Obviously, I have a bigger dick,” He ignores Five’s sneering, “We already know Klaus’ a slut, so it was just Klaus and I betting on Ben, and Ben and Klaus betting on me.”

Klaus interjects, “And I respect people’s privacy by not telling-”

“Klaus won both rounds because guess what,” Diego squeezes Klaus’ hands hard and raises his voice, smiling at Klaus’ exaggerated hurt expression, “He was present when both Ben and I tried to get inside some girls’ pants for the first time!”

“Hey! Technically I hooked you up, so you’re welcome,” Klaus turns his head to Five and throws him a saucy wink, “Different times, different girls, don’t worry.”

Five chuckles and walks towards the door, now that he finally has the answers. “It’s stupid to bet on shit like that in the first place,” He leans by the door and smiles at Klaus trying to fight off Diego’s hold, “I’ll tell you for free, I’m not a virgin.”

“Ha!” Klaus gets one hand back and almost screams in victory. He holds the free hand out, face shining with an immense amount of pride.

Diego groans. Slowly and reluctantly, he lets go of Klaus and digs out his wallet for a ten dollar bill. He then hands the bill to Klaus.

Five can’t help but laugh. He really does have some dumbasses for brothers.

****************************

The problem is, something still doesn’t add up. Five knows his siblings and how they operate, and he knows there’s something missing. He lies in bed thinking after getting bored with some literature analysis homework later in the evening.

And there it is. It’s simple math and the calculation doesn’t add up. The things they bet on summed up together still doesn’t justify the amount Klaus has profited. For one split second Five wants to jump inside Ben’s room because it’d be easy and maybe he deserves a jump scare. But then he quickly scraps that idea. The clock on wall points at 11:34.

He walks over to Ben’s door and sees the faint light seeping through the underneath door frame. “Come in?” Ben says after his first a few knocks.

Five hasn’t decided on what kind of strategy he’d used on grilling Ben then. Ben is in the white pajamas sitting on his bed comfortably with his back against the headboard. The room is dark with only the bedside lamp on. The dim but warm light surrounds Ben and the book he’s holding on his hand. As Five walks closer, he can see the book’s cover. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. That’s cute, Five makes the remark in his head.

“You need anything, Five?” Ben slides a bookmark between the pages and closes the book. Five sits down on the side of the bed when he places the book on the bedside table. Ben looks at him with a tentative expression and in return, Five gives him a faint smile that dies quickly, “Sometimes I feel like I’m less of a brother than the others,” He focuses on Ben’s hands, which are resting on the bed sheet, instead of looking back to Ben directly. He’s hoping for a lonesome and sad image and fortunately his acting seems to be adequate to get Ben going before he has to think of more melancholy lines to nudge his brother in the right direction.

“If this is about those stupid bets, I’m sorry, Five, we should’ve included you.”

Ben, always so easy to fall.

Now Five decides to stare Ben in the eyes, and Ben looks at him blinking and seems a little dumbfounded by the sudden change. “Diego and Klaus told me what happened.”

“They did?” Five nods.

“Oh,” Ben still holds an unmoving expression while slowly withdrawing his legs and pulling his knees closer to chest, “I didn’t know they’d tell you that.”

Five smiles, “Why not? I don’t mind.”

“Great,” Ben finally smiles back at him, “We didn’t mean anything bad, betting on you and Vanya, we were kinda drunk and y’know, stupid things happen.”

“Vanya and I aren’t crushing on each other,” Five laughs out loud this time, leaning back and holding himself up on the elbows, “And I thought you are the smarter one.”

“If you may recall, I don’t do well with alcohol.”

“Excuse!” Five sits straight again and speaks in a more settled tone, “If you want to know something from me, just ask. We live opposite to each other, Ben, I see you the first thing in the morning most of the days.”

“We live close for different reasons,” Ben extends his legs behind Five again and stops him before Five can object, “Yeah, I know, I know.”

Ah yes, the fucked up reasons that Reginald assigned them living across from each other for. “Fuck those reasons,” Five rolls his eyes, “Just ask.” He’s staring at Ben again, this time with serious sincerity.

Ben picks up his book from the side, “Not now! Just let me read my book in peace.” He’s smiling and baring his canines, Five notices the swelling has gone down mostly and the scab is almost unnoticeable in the dim light.

“I’m sorry that I punched you in the face,” Five says dryly.

Ben shrugs easily and still smiling while reaching up to touch his lower lip, “See? It’s fine.”

“You can punch me back,” Five offers, “ One free punch for you.”

“Seriously, Five,” Ben is finally annoyed and starts to kick Five from under the sheets, “Let me read my book.”

Five stands up and makes a short and derisive laugh, “That’s your loss.”


	2. Chapter 2

The blaring alarm pierces into his ears like an electric shock, his body jolts to wake. Sliding off the warmth of the bed, Five glances at the clock, it’s 6:30 in the morning. To avoid wasting time, he jumps right into the bathroom before anyone else can and quickly cleans himself up and jumps back to his bedroom. The alarm finally stops when Five finishes fitting himself into the black suit and gear. Opening the door, he can hear the chaos emerging from downstairs, and the door opposite to him open, Ben steps out rubbing his eyes, still dressed in pajamas.

“Morning Five.”

“Good morning.”

They go downstairs together and are welcomed by Grace’s warm smile at the bottom. She’s in a light pink dress with lace lining the V neck and white buttons, standing by a food cart with seven servings of peanut butter toasts topped with fresh strawberries and glasses of orange juice. Diego passes by and grabs his, “Thanks, Mom.” Allison is walking towards them from the end of the hallway, Ben guns for the bathroom as soon as he sees her. With a loud bang of the bathroom door, someone screams from the inside.

“Get out!” That’s Klaus.  
“Jesus Christ-lock the fucking door!” Ben yells and rushes out.

“Be care of your language, my dear,” Grace scolds lovingly while holding out Ben’s food to him.

Allison comes to join them by the stairs, “We really need another bathroom, why don't we have a girl’s bathroom?”

Five has the toast in his mouth, so he nods to agree. Diego lets out a bitter laugh, “I don’t think Dad knows the difference between boy and girl.”

With the usual amount of chaos, they finally finish getting ready in half an hour and are led by Pogo to the courtyard where their father is waiting for them beside a helicopter. 

The mission is in San Antonio. Reginald gives them the details on their way to the destination. An incident occurred at a robotics lab in the early morning that had caused major malfunction in some robots and they’ve started attacking the people in the lab. The lab is currently under lockdown, but some robots have left the premises and a city wide search is underway. Military sanctions are required to destroy these rogue robots, but it’d take too long for them to arrive when civilians are under immediate threats from them. So the Umbrella Academy is called to help.

The Academy is provided with a design blueprint that details the anatomy of the robots. They have a humanoid structure built with metal, just like how you would imagine them, except that their chest and back can open up and project flexible extensions with sharp ends like knives and their face has a hole that emits high energy beams with a temperature as high as 400 °C. They are fast and lethal.

The task is simple enough: destroy the robots as fast as they can. Reginald hands them a map of San Antonio and the lab and splits them into two teams. Luther would lead Diego, Klaus, and Ben into the lab to destroy the malfunctioning robots, while Five and Allison would aid the local authorities in the search for the ones running wild.

They are dropped off at the entrance of the gated grounds of the San Antonio Robotics Lab located at just the outskirts of the city. After the brief greetings with the police and the lab personnel, the two teams are sent off to their tasks.

Five’s spatial jump is good enough that he can take multiple people with him, so taking his machine gun with extra magazines and Allison is like a piece of cake, though Allison groans at the idea.

“I don’t understand why I am even on this mission.” Says Allison after they land on a major road bustling with a traffic jam, it’s almost 9 in the morning and the heat is coming on strong, “What am I gonna do, rumor some robots?... Can I rumor robots?”

Strolling along with her and looking around, Five scoffs, “Don’t think so.”

“You’re giving me a massive headache.”

Five rolls his eyes at the comment and pulls Allison closer to him as he powers up another jump. Before Allison could complain again, Five lands themselves across the road, in front of a cute café. His sister’s face lights up like a Christmas tree.  
Black coffee for Five and pumpkin spice latte for Allison.

Just as they walk out of the café, a radio call from the police department comes into their headsets about a sighting at the Six Flag. The park is closed for the day under the order from the authorities, but when Five and Allison arrive at the place, it seems like some people haven’t gotten the message to stay home today. It’s a Saturday, they can see the parking lot pretty crowded with family vans and little kids jumping around the entrance, their parents confused with the police trying to evacuate the place. The police department has poured most of its force at the lab and all over the city for the search, there are only two officers at the park and they seem to be overwhelmed by the crowd.

“I can’t believe this is what I signed up for,” Allison dumps her latte as she passes by a garbage bin, then walks over to the entrance. 

Five lets her deal with the frustrated civilians. He’s informed by the officers that the park workers saw two robots roaming inside just as they were preparing to open, which is perfect in Five’s definition, the place is empty for him to work freely. Jumping around the park swiftly, it doesn’t take Five long to spot one of the robots.

It looks weirder in person. The titanium alloy material reflects the sunlight and makes it look as if it’s shining with oil. The head has one visible opening, which is something that Five is definitely going to avoid; it’s the energy beam mouth. The bulky trunk has opened its covering on both sides, a few extensions are hanging out with their sharp endings pointing at various directions. A robot wandering in an amusement park like this looks funny. If it’s not a civilian threatening mission, Five would love to watch a robot taking a roller coaster ride or spinning on the teacups ride. 

Its infrared sensors detect Five at the distance of 20 feet just like how the design describes. It’s very fast; the joints turning the second Five steps within the detection range, and the sharp extensions all turn towards him and shoot out like the bullets. The energy beam leaves the concrete ground a nasty burn mark with smoke.

But Five is faster. He jumps onto a his planned spot on top of a hotdog truck and immediately fires two shots at the head. He’s aiming for the mouth since the structure is more delicate as described in the blueprint, but the robot is also turning and the shots miss, just hitting on the side of the mouth, bending the smooth surface in, and tiny sparks fly. The hotdog truck has its front fried open by the energy beam, burning up a foul metallic smell.

There is no other way that Five can dismantle these robots. Their heads contain the communication center crucial for operations and blunt force is needed to crush the titanium. Five jumps away just as the robot detects him again and continues to fire shots at the head. It works but it’s gonna take some time. 

After a few exchanges, the robot seems to have learned Five’s moves and starts to respond by covering up its mouth with a few of the metal extensions. Five curses at Reginald Hargreeves inside because why has the old man never adopted someone who can blast energy or manipulate fire as a superpower instead of his dumbass siblings? They aren’t born or trained to deal with this kind of crisis.

Just as Five makes another jump onto the low roof the single story arcade behind the robot, he spots movement with his left eye corner. 

“Fuck,” it’s the other one. 

Five knows he has to think of something else better than firing rounds at them, because one is already hard to deal with. A few robot extensions shoot right at his face and misses him just by half of a second, and he jumps behind the second robot, landing below the massive blue roller coaster. Both robots charge at him immediately, Five jumps in a reflex response onto a low part of the track, and that’s when the idea strikes him like a blink of lightning. 

It’ll be easy if it works. Five takes a deep breath watching the robots react to his position and readies himself by summoning up a massive amount of energy. He plants his feet at the sight of the sharp extensions shooting at him, suppressing the urge to dodge. At the last millisecond, he jumps away onto a low part of the track in front of him, just as the extensions reach to his feet.

Now he’s extremely close to the metal bastards, but this has to work. He does the same thing after extensions go over the previous track and curls back, gunning for him and shooting at him with the bright energy beam, he waits and then jumps onto a high part above the previous one. Their energy beams seem to be not strong enough to saw off the tracks, though the smell makes Five want to gag badly.

He repeats the same thing, jumping up and down, back and forth, ensuring the extensions would curl around the track every time. The small break he took from firing the rounds seems to signal the robots to use all of their extensions to attack him instead of shielding their face. It works in Five’s favor and he starts firing again all while tricking the robots into tangling up their weapon. 

Very soon the robots find themselves unable to move due to its extensions wrapping around the tracks all over. Five is exhausted with a series of non stop special jumps and notices the motion sickness that doesn’t usually come up during practices and missions, and the repulsive smell isn’t helping at all. But he doesn’t dare to take a breath and fires at the robot’s metal face as fast and accurately as he could while dodging the energy beams, he figures that the robots are smart enough to learn to untangle themselves very soon.

Thank Five himself for not bringing a handgun and instead carrying the machine gun out of habit. Just as the extensions are looping back, the robot’s titanium face starts to fall off into chunks and pieces. Letting out a long breath he’s been holding, Five watches in relief the robots power down, fall to the ground, and their extensions follow like soft tentacles. 

Fucking robots. Five mutters as he drops to the group in the normal way. Wiping at his forehead and combing the fallen strands of hair back to the side, he slowly walks over to the robots.  
“Hey!” He hears Allison at a distance, then looks up and sees her jogging towards him, “I’ve been calling you, you didn’t answer.”

He’s been actively ignoring her voices in the call to concentrate, “Yeah I know, I was busy.”

Allison reaches him and the robots, throwing him an impressed look, “I was worried, but looks like you’ve got it.”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Five kicks at one of the robot heads, showing her a winning smile with teeth.

“Well, we should get people to clean this up.” Allison presses the headset to switch channels, “Two robots down at the amusement park, under the roller coaster.”

The chief of police tells them that the officers have the city under control, and they would need some help at the lab. Five sends themselves back as soon as they see the officers arrive at the roller coaster.

What they weren’t told is how bad the situation at the lab is. 

They switch to the lab team channel as soon as they arrive outside and immediately sense the tense atmosphere. The police chief is shouting with the lab head, though he tries to lower his voice it doesn't seem to work, while the other man is typing some codes on his laptop fretfully. The team of officers are clutching onto their guns tight pointing at the direction of the main door. The rest of the lab staff are in a heated argument, talking in some technical jargons that Five doesn’t fully understand. Reginald Hargreeves seems to have been standing behind the line of the officers since they left, hands leaning on his cane, expression calm and collected.  
“What’s the situation inside?” Allison speaks as she walks over to Reginald. She flinches to a sudden loud crash from the lab, yet the channel is completely silent.

Five hears that too. He jumps a bit too close to the lab head, “What is that?”

The police chief answers him, “We’ve lost communication about nine minutes ago. There’s not much we can tell from the outside so-”

“What?” Allison shouts, “So why haven’t you sent people to check?”

Five feels his heart drop hard to his stomach. He jumps back to the helicopter to reload his gun, and he hears Allison go absolutely off at the chief and the lab head.

“There’s one thing we know,” The lab head interjects, wiping off his palms on his pants, “Twelve robots inside, Five of them down, that uh, that leaves us seven.”

“And that’s all you got? Aren’t you supposed to know these damn things inside out, like with a host program?” 

“Uh you see, they are only prototypes and shouldn’t even be working at all, the only thing my program can do is to detect whether the power is on or off.”

“That’s very helpful,” Five huffs out a laugh, and he’s done reloading and moved swiftly besides Reginald. Five can’t tell what the old man is thinking right now, but that doesn’t matter. “I am going in.”

“Take me.” Allison says from behind.

Five waves her off dismissively, “I need someone to navigate me with the map.” He doesn’t wait for Allison’s protest and reaches the main entrance in the next second.

“Remember I am Three and you are Five?” Over the headset, Five then hears her telling the lab head to override the lockdown and open the door for him. 

The first thing Five sees is the mess at the front desk. Papers are scattered all over the place, coffee spilled and soaked some of it. The swirl chair is off ten feet away in the hallway. The human-height monstera plant beside the desk is on the floor with half of its mud on the white marble floor. Muddy footprints lead into the hallways left and right as well as the admin office behind.

Five can see there’s nothing inside the admin office through the glass panels.

The loud clash from earlier should’ve come from the shop, if Five has estimated it correctly.

“How far is the shop from here?” Five opens the door to the admin office just to make sure there is truly no one there.

Allison answers him instantly, “Center of the building, fourth floor, it should be about… a hundred and twenty feet, you can make that easy.”

“Alright,” Five cracks his neck and cocks his gun. He blinks and the next moment he lands on the edge of a hole, nearly tipping over.

Five doesn’t see them but he hears them first, the metal extensions projecting out like bullets, all charging at him from different directions. He has just landed and panics a little, even though he’ told himself not to. Summoning up enough energy, Five freezes up the time just for two and a half seconds to confirm that he’s standing right next to a hole that goes all the way down who knows where and there are four robots present in the robot. All the machines are broken and thrown across the room along with lab tools. There are pieces of metal that he can’t distinguish whether they are part of the machines or some robotic components on the floor along with half of the ceiling. The pearl white walls and the marble tiles of the floor are marked by deep black lines, which Five assumes are from the energy beams.

“I see four in the shop.”

But no human. None of his brothers.  
Five jumps behind a robot that’s closer to a wall so that he can see the other ones easier. Before they notice him, he kicks at the robot’s back with full force. It hurts like hell to kick at the titanium, but it works like how he intended, the robot fumbles a few steps forward and falls while shooting their energy beams, and the heat bores two black lines on the marble. 

The back of the robot on the floor also opens up with extensions. Five moves immediately, cursing loudly at the fact this place wouldn’t work with his earlier strategy, though he’s firing rounds at them again while dodging as fast as he could.

In between his movements, Five suddenly picks up the sounds of something else other than the extensions. He freezes again just to see a knife flying from the hole and across the room in a curved track like a snake. When he unfreezes the next second, some of the extensions are chasing after the knife.

“Diego!”

“Fucking finally!”

Five sees Number Two’s hands come up gripping the edge of the hole, he shouts at him to stop but it’d be too late. He freezes again in a hurry and physically kicks at the robots that have already shot a beam aimed at the hole. Time unfreezes again, and the blast narrowly misses Diego’s head peeking out the hole and instead paints more black lines on the walls.

Diego nods at him as a thank you, then lifts himself out of the hole, making a flip before landing onto the floor. His head is covered with blood, one side of the spandex is broken off, leaving the other side hanging, but his movements seem to be flexible and normal. Before the robots have the chance to face up to fire their energy beams while lying on the floor, he stops all of the metal extensions that are up in the air.

Five sees his intention straight away. He fires rounds at the robot heads while doing half second time stops. While he does it repeatedly, Diego maneuvers the extensions as if they are his knives, curving them like ropes across the room. In a few swift moments, he has the five robots tied up by the extensions, all of them facing each other. 

Five throws Diego an impressed look. “Try and kick that one’s head.” He stands at a distance and points at the robot with its metal head almost crushed in yet somehow is miraculously functioning.   
Diego frowns a little with confusion, but he does what Five says. The seconds his feet leave the metal head, an energy beam blasts from it and right onto the other robot’s head across from it, triggering responses from the rest of the robots. The startled look on Diego’s face is priceless. 

Five shrugs at Diego’s silent accusation, “Just a guess.” It worked like how he imagined, the robots destroyed themselves.

Before Five asks, Diego gestures the hole, “Luther’s down there.”

Five looks down to what seems like the two floors below them. Luther is lying in the ruins of everything and ashes. He’s unconscious. The image makes Five want to turn away. Most of his suit is gone, and all Five can see is the pink and black patches of burnt flesh among ashes and smoke. If Diego hasn’t told him that is Luther, Five doesn’t think he could tell.

“Where are the other two?” 

Diego clears his throat, and Five could only see water in his eyes up this close, “I don’t know, Lut-Luther, said we should split into floors, Klaus should be on the third floor, Ben should be on the first, you didn’t see him when you came in?”  
“No,” Five paces back and forth for a few rounds and catches himself to a stop. “We’ll find them first.”

“And leave Luther here?”

“What is going on now?” Allison asks from the other side.

Five ignores that and looks away to check his ammo. “You will find Klaus. I can get to Ben faster.”

He jumps as he finishes speaking, leaving no room for arguments. He finds himself landing on the first floor directly under the shop. If he remembers correctly, this should be an exhibition for the lab’s inventions.

The showcase glasses are shattered and all over the floor. Five is lucky he didn’t step onto one that’s sharp enough to penetrate into his feet when he landed. Immediately he notices the movement in the back of the broad and long exhibition hall.

Five freezes physically at the sight of him. Ben is pressing his back on the wall while a pair of tentacles are curled around the neck of the robots on the both sides of him, forcing them to face forward so that they wouldn’t face him. Ben’s face is red like he’s suffocating. It’s an extremely awkward position and he’s holding on with what seems like all of his strength. The rest of his tentacles are tangled with the extensions. The robots cannot move, but so does he. 

Five takes a slow step towards them. And then he inches closer like that while carefully examining the robots' movements, until he could see blood slowly pumping out of Ben’s neck. He doesn’t jump because that might startle the robots.

“Don’t come-” There is no voice coming out of Ben. Five can only tell the words by his lip moving.

Five is certain he’s well within the range for the robots to detect him now, but they might be too tangled up with Ben at the moment to make a shot at Five. Five moves his mouth.

_Try and stay still. Close your eyes._

It takes Ben some time to understand and do what he said. 

Five takes a deep breath, readies his gun, aiming at the one with the extension head on Ben’s neck. He counts down to three and fires.

The moment the first bullet hits the robot, sparking flying up in the air, Five could see a splash of red painting onto the cold metal.

Five finishes as fast as he could, and he catches Ben before he falls onto the floor. Ben is somehow still conscious, trying to mutter some words out, but Five isn’t getting what he is saying. 

It takes three seconds for him to drop Ben outside to the awaiting ambulance truck. It takes him another ten whole seconds to return and carry Luther out. He gags at the smell as he lifts Luther up from the pool of blood, unable to find a way to make Luther more comfortable. Five doesn’t even remember to check if Luther is breathing.

After he helps Luther onto the stretcher, Five feels like he’s used up all of his power for his whole life, unable to give a comforting hand on his weeping sister by Luther’s side. He’s walking towards the entrance again, ready to make another round for Diego and Klaus. The lab head announces that all of the robots are down in relief. In the corner of his eyes, he sees the paramedics starting to resuscitate Ben. And some of his tentacles are still hanging outside, squirming lifelessly.

Then he sees Diego carrying Klaus on his back, walking slowly but steadily across the field towards them. A few officers rush to help.

Five wipes off Luther’s blood on his face and sees Reginald turn to him. His expression is calm and unreadable as usual. Five takes off his gun and throws them onto the seat inside the helicopter, but the gun drops to the ground in a loud thud.

“The mission is completed.” Reginald says.


End file.
